Broadband speed and email size

Jolly_Roger

I buy a package from Virgin giving me up to 8MB of Broadband and allowing me to send files of up to 10MB via my email account. Using the BT tester, at 17.30, I found I had 1.44MB download speed via the BB, while the Virgin server rejected my 9MB photo file sent via my email account, claiming it was too big. I phoned the 25p per minute help line and was told to regularly test the download connection using the BT site, which I shall. I was also told that files of greater than 8MB somehow expand when sent and therefore breach the size limit. Sound like bull to me, would any of you experts like to comment?

Cypher

Why are you sending such big files by e-mail

Whenever I send a large file, I upload it to webspace and then send the download link in the e-mail.

Mr_Squiddy

Jolly_Roger wrote:

I buy a package from Virgin giving me up to 8MB of Broadband and allowing me to send files of up to 10MB via my email account. Using the BT tester, at 17.30, I found I had 1.44MB download speed via the BB, while the Virgin server rejected my 9MB photo file sent via my email account, claiming it was too big. I phoned the 25p per minute help line and was told to regularly test the download connection using the BT site, which I shall. I was also told that files of greater than 8MB somehow expand when sent and therefore breach the size limit. Sound like bull to me, would any of you experts like to comment?

I am afraid it all sounds very normal to me. Broadband speed can be very variable. Basically the only thing you might be able to rely on is the speed between your property and the exchange to which you are connected. After that all bets are off.

There is a certain amount of what is called 'overhead' when sending anything across a network. However for Virgin to reject a file of 8Mb on that basis is ridiculous as that implies an overhead of 20% which is rather large. If they are advertising a 10Mb maximum file size then that is what they should offer, not 8Mb.

GoofyGAT

I'd agree with both Cypher & Mr Squiddy. If you're still unable to send the file, use a free service like the one I've mentioned below.

For large(r) files, I use a free service called Streamload/Mediamax & email download links to the recipients.

Basic Streamload terms are 25Gb free storage space, with 100Mb download restriction per file & 1Gb download limit per month. Using their free down/upload manager makes things a lot quicker. Recently, I was very impressed by their customer service. They replied to one query within 2 days & another within 4 days - & I only have a free account with them. G

John_Gray

Because of the need to encode the contents of an attachment into a form that can be reliably transmitted over the internet, the result is that every three bytes of the attachment are encoded into four bytes for transmission. Most mail systems use something called MIME, which generates data containing only the upper- and lower-case alphabetic characters, numbers, and two 'special' characters / and +. See, for example, this article.

It thus depends on whether that 10 MB 'limit' relates to the original attachment or the '33% bigger" data which has been MIME-encoded...

John

nickmack

John_Gray wrote:

It thus depends on whether that 10 MB 'limit' relates to the original attachment or the '33% bigger" data which has been MIME-encoded...

Exactly John, the 10Mb limit will almost certainly be applied at the OP's server level, so the 8Mb email will have been inflated after MIME encoding in their mail program.

superscaper

Also it doesn't take into account that although Virgin may send emails up to 10 MB that doesn't mean that the address you are sending it can receive emails that large.